I just thank God that the resources here have taken care of me tremendously. I have no issues, as far as I’m concerned, but yet there is a lot to be done.

I think they are doing it in the wrong way. There are a lot of companies that actually build stuff for the homeless, like a jacket that turns into a sleeping bag, so they can live on their own but I understand that, and that’s totally cool- I mean I think that’s a great idea but I feel like that’s just kind of fueling the fire.

He beats em almost to death and then he pours gasoline or some combustible on em... And a lot of us aren’t worried, but the ones that are, I have women come to me that’ve known me a long time and they ask if they can sleep around my tent.

I think the only thing that kept me going was my faith, and even that got shaken sometimes real bad. Real bad, you know? But I’m a survivor. I never thought I’d live to be 60 years old.

You get stuck, you really get stuck.

We’re putting people in this collision course with other people and breaking those stereotypes that all homeless people are drunks and addicts. And maybe some of them are, maybe a lot of them are, but they’re also people. And they have stories, and they have goodness, and they have something that’s worth serving.

What got me out of it [homelessness] was not any services by the city or anything, it was love and patience of individuals who were there for me in a way that was responsive and their love wasn’t contingent on my behavior...

I like making people feel good, I like changing people’s environments. I come from a happy profession. I keep saying to myself ‘How much longer am I going to do this?’ It’s not particularly a happy profession, but am I making a change? Yes.

I worked through a lot of resentment, my dad was an alcoholic. He was a messy drunk. And so, seeing messy drunks now just brings back all the memories as a kid growing up in that kind of a household. And so I had to work through all of that and finally get to the point where every time I see a homeless person now this is just somebody who was a little kid, who went to school, had this kind of upbringing...